“Love your neighbor,” Bella said.
The room fell silent. Her mother covered her mouth while her father glared. “What was that?” he asked.
Bella didn’t know where that comment had come from. She’d just been considering the possibility, and out popped Scripture. She stood and walked to the small square window looking toward town. “What if he does like me? It’d be horrible, wouldn’t it? He’s tied up in a challenge against my father, while wanting to court me? What a conundrum.”
“Enough with your romantic notions,” her father said. “Find a good man who loves God and can support a family. Not Adam Fisher. He owes the bank for that machine. If he doesn’t get hired by some farmers, he’s going to lose everything.”
“If he loses to you, he’ll lose everything?” Bella allowed this to sink in. It was her job or his. Unless she could pass the teacher’s exam.
Putting on a brave face, she turned to her parents. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, particularly to wonder if Adam is besotted with me. Regardless, I don’t see you have any worries about our studying together. He’s a stern taskmaster.”
Pa took a deep breath to answer, but before he found the words, her mother laid her hand flat on the table. “Be careful, Bella. You’re such a sweet girl, it’d only be natural that he’d fall in love with you, but whatever you decide—”
“Whatever she decides?” Pa blustered. Then, pulling at his thick beard, he reconsidered. “I suppose it’d be in good taste to extend friendship. It’d show that I’m not going to enjoy beating the whelp at his game, yet at the same time, for us to be overly familiar with him will seem strange to our neighbors. My reputation . . .”
“You’re not the one being courted by him, you old goat,” her mother said. “I don’t think there’s any danger of you being overly familiar with him.”
“The same better hold true for Bella,” he said, his eyes pinning her with suspicion.
Overly familiar with Adam? Bella wasn’t sure what they were warning her against, but her imagination came up with some intriguing possibilities.
The day had been profitable, Adam reasoned as he exercised his horses on the treadmill. None of the farmers in Grimes County would commit to hiring him yet. He couldn’t blame them for waiting to see the results of Mr. Eden’s challenge, but he was making inroads into the community. While most of them couldn’t swallow Dr. Paulson’s edicts from on high, they sought Adam out for private consultations to get his opinion on matters.
“Barley has always done well on my farm, but it’s been six years. Should I keep with it, or give the soil a rest and switch to another grain?”
“What are they saying in town about the price of cotton? Will it stay this high until next season?”
“The wife has been deviled by potato bugs in our garden. How can she get rid of the critters?”
Often, Adam brought the questions straight to Dr. Paulson, then carried the answers back unaltered, but somehow they were more palatable coming from Adam.
These were the people he wanted to live among. When Adam was growing up, his father was convinced that prosperity could be found just over the next ridge, so they rarely stayed put for long. If he retraced his path, there wouldn’t be many who remembered him growing up. Nowhere that would claim him. But Oak Springs hadn’t been so long ago that his history had been erased. He had friends here. He had a start. This sun, this sky, this land—it was where he belonged, but he had yet to prove it to the townsfolk.
Even if he did succeed, he wouldn’t be there year-round. To establish himself, he had to travel. Many families were in the same situation—soldiers, sailors, even the cowboys taking to the cattle trails every year. But not all women had the starch to handle a life apart from their husbands. Was Bella one of them?
Everything he’d seen since returning confirmed that she was.
Adam swished the whip over the horses’ rumps to set the team moving again. Looking back, he could see that Bella had always fascinated him. Smart, determined, and as curious about the world as he was, but the time hadn’t been right. She’d been nose-to-the-grindstone determined to lasso that Jimmy kid when Adam came to town. Just as well. Adam didn’t have anything to offer her back then.
Did he have anything to offer now? Well, that depended a lot on beating her father at a contest and whether or not he could make the payment on his thresher. He had a lot of promise, but that promise might dry up like wheat in a drought if he couldn’t make the payments.
Convinced that the horses had been exercised sufficiently, Adam unharnessed them and set them loose in the pasture he was leasing from Mr. Longstreet. It was nearly time to meet Bella for more studying. So far, no one had remarked on their association. Maybe they thought it impossible that they’d be friends, considering the nature of the contest. Or maybe people had better things to worry about than the courting habits of their young folk.
No, it definitely wasn’t that.
Coming toward town, he could see the students scattering out of the schoolyard, some running home, some dawdling with friends. He was right on time.
He’d thought the students were all gone by the time he entered the schoolhouse, but when he stepped onto the threshold, he heard a girl’s voice.
“Miss Eden, is your given name Bertha?”
“No, Minnie. It’s Bella. Why do you ask?”
There was some giggling coming from the corner. His eyes lit on a gaggle of girls in their pinafores.
“The reason I ask is because Mary said that those initials at the big oak were yours, and no one would put their initials in the heart with yours.” Minnie’s eyes went wide at the look on Bella’s face. “I’m sorry, Miss Eden. I just wanted to know if it was
